I enlisted in the Air Force out of high school at eighteen. It was 1972, I had no interest in going to college at that time, my draft number was 9, so I was most likely headed to Vietnam. I had loved air planes since childhood, so enlisting in the Air Force seemed a logical next move. After my discharge from the service I returned to Atlanta where I worked a variety of jobs during the day and attended college at night.

   It was around this time that I discovered Soaring. One introductory flight and I was hooked. For the better part of the following year I spent most of my weekends, weather permitting, flying sailplanes. The lure of aviation ultimately became so strong that I decided to put my academic endeavors on hold, and entered technical school. Two years later I was a licensed aircraft mechanic working at a local airport. At this time aviation was an all consuming passion for me, yet between working on aircraft, flying and a short lived affair with skydiving, I still found time to paint the occasional watercolor, or illuminate a letter to a friend.

    At the end of a particularly cold winter, spent working in an unheated hangar, I found myself tempted to change careers when the father of a friend, who owned a graphic design company, offered me a job as a paste up artist. The idea of working in any sort of art related business was impossible to resist, so I made the decision to mothball my tools, and accept his offer. I gave my notice at the airport and a two weeks later I was sitting at a drafting table working as an “artist”. 

   Two years after that a chance reunion with a high school friend led to employment, and an eventual partnership, in his typesetting/graphic design company. It was a great job but sadly, towards the end of our sixth year of operation, the growing popularity of desktop publishing had taken such a heavy toll on our business that we reluctantly agreed to close our shop. In the next couple of years I worked for a number of design firms on a salaried, and freelance basis. 

     Ready to give up the freelance life for a stable job with a regular paycheck, I made the decision to follow in the footsteps of my wife Karen, who at the time was working as a registered nurse. A year of prerequisite classes and two,  tough, years of nursing school later, I was working as an RN.

    My nursing career began in the Emergency Room, but I eventually moved to the Operating Room. I had been working as a nurse for nearly ten years when some close friends told Karen and I how they had begun to sell their artwork on the internet at a website called eBay. Excited by the prospect Karen and I decided to give it a try for ourselves and quickly discovered it was possible. I spent the following year working days in the OR, and painting nights and weekends. By the close of that year I had a substantial following on eBay and had been accepted into my first gallery. It was at this point that I decided to crunch the numbers. I calculated that the income from the gallery, combined with my internet sales had reached an amount that could cover my monthly nut, so I took the leap and began to paint full-time.

   That was November of 2005. Since that time I’ve had the privilege of showing my work at numerous galleries throughout the US and abroad. I’m currently represented by Rehs Galleries Inc. in New York, and C. K. Contemporary Gallery in San Francisco.